Destruction Bench Agreement
Destruction Bench Agreement (often abbreviated to DBA) is a series on the patronix1234 twitch channel. It is played in the Anime Campaign system. Unlike normal games, this series does not have one set GM, but rather any player can step up if they have a concept and run a match. All the players usually make their own characters as well, with a very hodgepodge clash of different art styles due to having many different artists working on it. The series is most recognizable for its massive roster of characters and injokes, as well as devolving into complete insanity on a regular basis. It usually runs on Saturdays at 3 pm EST and the games (typically) last around 4-5 hours. DBA is not to be confused with the DBA tournament for which the series is named after. DBA Meta Chronology Pre-DBA DBA originally started after the end of the original Anime Campaign from JelloApocalypse. Many fans were sad to see it go, and decided to collectively make a bunch of character sheets on one document to show each other for fun. Eventually, people like x89rt and Ballast had the idea of creating a tournament style weekly PvP game to test the characters against each other, especially since finding players for AC games can be difficult. The server and Roll20 were made, and the arena was designed as a 20x20 area, with a 5x5 grid of Negative Cubes each 4x4 in size as the floor, and a podium protected by a barrier in the center. This became the classic arena that is still used today. - PvP Era (Episodes 0 - 11) When DBA first started, the matches were all exclusively PvP. This usually meant matches on the arena, with three players on each side. At the start of DBA there was almost an overabundance of players, so spots were easy to fill. This petered out fast by around episode 6 or so. In the beginning x89rt acted as sort of the original leader of DBA, and looking back he was clearly a controlling force that stopped a lot of the complete chaos that defines it now. PvEs were a concept being thrown around since the test session, but x89rt specifically wanted no GMs to do them until he finished a small introduction session that would introduce the President of DBA and a central conflict. This eventually turned into the Bagel Saga, which has still yet to release. x89rt had to leave DBA for unclear reasons around episode 8, which left the door open for the already present Sylvia to start taking the reins. This era of DBA is when many of the most iconic characters were introduced: Venus, Emrick, James, Benny, Cam, Chip, Alphy, Apollo, Mr. Dad, Weylan, Nova, Tiffany, Vargus, Lilin, Saffron, Akhen, Gizmo, Theo, and Viktor. Most matches in this era revolved around PvP "gimmicks". These could range from simple item boxes to having Horizontal Pilot Command cards to even just a straight up race in the rafters. These gimmicks tended to involve more player input and customizability than that of the modern ones. At this point the meta had yet to form on what a "good" DBA character was. Since all characters were still on the original massive sheet, they were all open to peer review, and many players, especially x89rt, would frequently tone things down. Most abilities were pretty limited and often just attacking someone with your weapon was a good use of an action. You could see things changing with characters like Venus Vanderbelt. Another constant was having ~2 announcers every match, each of which made their own little wrestler intros for every character to say at the start of the match. This started out with Benny and Rosé being the classic announcers, but quickly alternated as other GMs took center stage. However, these began to fade by the end of this era as it became more and more tedious to write massive descriptions of every character, many of which were returning. - Early Era (Episodes 12a - 25) This era of DBA is defined by having little to no "plot threads". Since PvEs were on the table after 12a surprised the players, it was a race to do all of the wacky ideas for combats there were. This often resulted in a lot of meme combats or games that were less "how do I make a compelling story" and more "I have this weird theme for a combat, how do I do it". For example, Abominations Anonymous, The Loss Episode, and Third Time's The Cry, each of which were basically "cursed image combat", "mech combat", and "airship combat" respectively. This is where Sylvia began to establish herself along with the many tropes of both her sessions and characters. With the exception of maybe Up In Flames, very few episodes tried to do anything particularly special with a serious story or continuous plot string. The meta of DBA was solidified here. While there were some growing pains, characters began to use more broad and context sensitive abilities to deal with enemies in a more interesting (and often more powerful and chaotic) way. The two announcer thing was almost entirely disbanded, instead games were usually led along by an NPC tagalong who pointed the contestants towards a thing to do. Surprisingly there aren't many iconic characters that made their debuts during this era. Rio, Timothy, Valeria, Clarisse, and Abigail are clear exceptions. However, largely not many characters from this era became classic recurring ones like in the PvP era. - Villain Era (Episodes 12c - 33) This era may be more appropriately called the "Plotline" era, where games often had more plotlines that carried people through the episode. However, the villains were really what showed the strengths of these episodes. For example, we had the introduction of W, Cynthia (and the rest of the Vanderbelt Family), Tyrone, and the Demon Sisters, who all made their presences known and collectively were the most active. This had some of the biggest highlights of DBA history, like www.REBOOT.dba and What Happened to Phoenix Laboratories?. By this point, the meta of complete bullshit powers was well established and the bar for what is "balanced" was continually pushed, often by Zanza. There was also an influx of new players from viewers of Eternal_Savvy's "Getting Savvy" campaign, whose first episode took place in an alternate universe DBA tournament as a tribute. This brought the attention of many of the original AC crew and viewers to DBA, even if for only a short time. - Experimental Era (Episodes 34 - 42) This era continues the Villain thread of the previous era, but adds onto it a lot of experimentation into the format of the matches themselves. A baseball game where you can murder, a game where you play as pre-established villain characters in a family bonding experience, JoJos, etc. On top of this other villains are still being built up, for example Zalgo and more Demon Sisters. - Star and Sylvia Golden Era (Episode 43 - Present) This era is marked by the incredible union of long time GM Sylvia and newcomer DarkStar. With an artist that is able to make a ridiculous amount of icons in such a short time, a GM with plenty of experience specifically in handling and harnessing DBA's insanity, and their joint memetic chaos, they've been able to set a new standard for DBA episodes. This era tends to focus on having a lot of GM prepared content, as opposed to the previously sparse gimmicks that relied on the players to propel themselves further. What was originally a constant recycle of a small handful of villains is now a deluge of tons and tons of unique NPCs. Each episode aims to be its own complete self-contained thing. And on top of that, episodes are more frequently revolving around massive shitposts and specific callbacks to even simple offhanded lines that are expanded into a massive prolonged joke. As consequence, episodes have been getting steadily longer, with Episode 44 breaking the mold and followed by Episode 50 completely shattering it. DBA Plot Timeline Origins The Destruction Bench Agreement tournament was founded on some pretty cursed grounds for unknown reasons, with unknown funds, and by a currently unknown President. It would broadcast fights between its contestants to the world at large, with many fighters of varying levels of questionable character joining for their own reasons. Surprisingly, a lot of people joined simply to make friends and meet like minded people. While few people attend DBA live in person, it's massively popular to watch. People only don't show up because DBA quickly developed a history of being incredibly dangerous to everyone within a 20 mile radius of it. Canonically, every episode is generally 1 day separated from each other, airing nearly every day. This makes some of the holiday stuff weird, but time is already likely not flowing correctly around the tournament grounds to begin with. This doesn't take into account potential breaks or episodes that don't count. DBA seems to mysteriously have a lot of footage of seemingly impossible things, like alternate universes, that it shows live. It is largely unexplained whether DBA had been a thing long since before the first actual episode in the series, or if that was the start of it. However, due to exposition from Mr. Worldwide, there is a distinct possibility that DBA has been going for at least 5 years in universe. Early Combats At the start matches were fairly simple, with Benny Brooks and Rosé Lee acting as announcers for the tournament. However, Rosé was quickly fired for bullshit reasons, causing Benny to enroll as a contestant to scream at the show runners. Not much in the form of an overarching story happened in these matches, but here's a quick list of cool moments and the rare few important things: * Venus, due to her powerset as well as frequently getting carried away, gained a false reputation for being a super villain. * James summoned Mark Dayton with the wiki game, who is an actual human being from Not Anime Earth. He lived in the rafters before getting powers much later in the series. * James himself has a semi-job at DBA, living in his office and hacking the government secrets. * Many characters become strong friends. Cam, Timony, James, Emrick, Alphy, and Venus all become pals. Viktor and Akhen bond over hating everyone else. * Speaking of Viktor, he proved to the world that he sucks ass. No one knows why he still tries. * Various monsters are created or enter DBA over the course of the first era. For example: The Heart Parasites, [REDACTED], the shit they corrupted, a leviathan, Robo-Robins, and Rosa. * Lilin and Theo are established as cousins and have a massive battle, which somehow ends in the tax man defeating Demon DIO Brando. * Theo in general proves to be the One Punch Man. * FiZZ!!! spreads in popularity and sponsors the tournament, thanks to Leo. * Allan Paris is dragged to hell, while Nova tries to be but is kicked out for being "too unruly". * Vargus had gained an ability of Chip's from his passive, in a weird roundabout way involving witch soup. - Episode 12 Outbreak During the twelfth episode of DBA, a massive breach happens. The Heart Parasites from Episode 2 have managed to get one of Desmond's minions to open Rio's Closet, which is where most of the demons, horrifying monsters, and general messes that DBA has created over the first dozen episodes have been locked away. The closet is basically another dimension. All of these beings went loose on the tournament, so everyone took action: The contestants of the original match that day (with a gimmick of slot machines that was reused the next day) fled into the Locker Rooms, to stay alive and protect the rest of the arena. The Swabomination, Vascary, and various glitch monsters break in, but the party manages to hold them at bay. During the ordeal Emrick and James form a close bond, and Gizmo and Vargus strengthen their fucking hatred for each other's guts. The team ends up building a massive spider mech to confront the creatures in the arena, and they end up fighting Rosa before escaping. Another group leads the other fighters to try and evacuate as many non-fighter audience members out of the building safely. They manage to get through various creatures like Robo-Robins invading the lobby, and save everyone in a protective force field. They then headed further into the arena to enter Rio's Closet and beat up the Heart Parasites. They had to traverse some dangerous FiZZ!!! flooded terrain to get there, and fight off Card Sharks and Leviathans alike. The remaining people in the arena were seemingly flickered out of existence, away to another dimension. In the chaos, The Shadow Queen had decided to attack this dimension to attempt to take it over. In her home dimension, events were set up in such a way that no one was strong enough to stop the episode 12 outbreak, which eventually caused the end of the world. The Shadow Queen desired to leave her universe to rot, claiming the next to rule. This backfired as strong contenders alongside Jamie's brother Joseph lead to her defeat and eventual arrest, allowing everyone to return to their home plane and conveniently letting all the other people be safe during the outbreak. - Negative Theory MatPat During an RP session, Nova fired out MatPat from her Euclidean Moonbuster. Local fucker Ryla somehow stuffed this living being into her coat for later, which just so happened to be midmatch. The players all teamed up to fight MatPat and won, leading to the first of Ballast's sessions that changed what they were on the PvP to PvE axis. The next day, Dio Infusio attacked the players will cursed images. However, he was quickly defeated, and after him MatPat returned for seconds. He used his outclass to turn into Sans/Ness, and due to his powerful theorycraft was almost untouchable. Weylan managed to, through some wild magic, create Weylan Jr., a godlike saiyan that could protect the Lockerverse. Unfortunately, MatPat's soul was swallowed by & Knuckles & Knuckles X, who promptly killed himself out of shame. In one of these episodes Timothy makes his first appearance. He's a massive Two joke, with everything about him from his powers to his home country to his design revolving around the number 2. He was only around for two episodes, his second of which was episode 22. This is all ominous foreshadowing for later. - Solar Syndicate The Solar Syndicate had challenged the nebulous group of DBA 5 years prior to some baseball and lost. Mr. Worldwide was confident enough to come seeking revenge, and pitted their team against the DBA Rock Lobsters. Unfortunately, the contestants at DBA are all insane, so all of the Solar Syndicate's teammates were fucked up or left, with the exception of Hot Rod. One of Cam's clones also gains sentience and goes Rogue. - Up In Flames Valeria had been present in DBA for a while now, however this was her first real attempt at being a serious threat. In an alternate universe, she set Mr. Worldwide's hair on fire, out of simple boredom and curiosity. This was really bad for everyone alive though. In the end, an incredibly bullshit combination of Clarisse's outclass and Ryla's existence cured the fire, and Desmond managed to cure Emrick of his lobster curse through a special nat 20 crown. Too bad this is an alternate timeline. - Time Police Around now it's established that the Time Police exist. They're basically multiversal temporal law enforcers that have infinite resources, the ultimate form of law against horrible creatures like Valeria. Did I say creatures? I meant criminals. Initially Dante is a member outright, while Meridian is an undercover agent. However, Cam manages to figure out the secret going on and ends up joining the Time Police himself. - W Appears W first appears in Shadow Realm Requiem as the Weird Handshake Statue in a museum. It has a wacky voice and is clearly an insane god. Through unknown shenanigans, the spirit within ends up controlling a generator in Raucous Ruby Rumble, before convincing the emotionally damaged Vaskeri to give control of his body to him. From there, he managed to take control of a better body in the form of the Alpha Rogue Cam Clone. W is in truth an elder god of the Shadowrealm, a plane of darkness and void. His goals specifically are unknown, but for now he desires an honest to god human body. Vaskeri and the Cam clone do not satisfy either of these desires. Eventually, in one episode, W fakes an episode of DBA as if it were the first episode, before sucking everyone into a Danganronpa style killing game, but with fake people instead of actual murders. They play a match in the Shadowrealm before W empowers Fake Viktor with a fraction of his energy, which ends up becoming a massive four phase fight that pushes the players. - Tyrone Tyrone is the half brother of Timothy, and is basically that character the sequel (Better yet, the threequel). He's based around Three jokes and puns. Unfortunately, three is a kind of high number to base a whole kit around. Also unfortunately, Zanza was in charge of proficiency upgrades. This caused Tyrone to become insanely powerful really fast, becoming a massively powerful boss fight looming on the horizon for episode 33. Before then, Tyrone spent episodes utterly destroying everything with an army of himself and with ridiculous rolling modifiers. - Meeting the Vanderbelt Family At this point both Venus and her Shadowrealm demon younger sister Voia had been known by the DBA crew for a long ass time. However, we began to understand the full nature of their family around now. For one, the family was incredibly rich, they had a metric fuckton of family members (all sisters), they were incredibly fortified against outside threats, and most importantly: they're a family of villains. Every member with the sole exception of Venus were all super villains in one way or another, spreading whatever their brand of evil was. Unfortunately, despite being the only one who rejected being a villain, Venus has been labeled by the world as by far the worst most evil villain of their entire family. We ended up meeting Valoura when visiting for Christmas. She's a hardcore weeb and seems to have villainy and heroism confused, attacking random people but claiming it's for a righteous cause against evildoers. However, using some void bacon the party accidentally summoned W into the outing. He ended up possessing Valoura, much to Venus' dismay. W's terms for switching out of this body, his final goal for now, was to have Venus find a new human body to give him instead. She begrudgingly agreed, but Rio ends up intercepting W's transfer back into his old body with a bucket, turning him into one. From there, Cam calls Meridian to take him to The Citadel. However, soon after we meet the worst Vanderbelt of them all: Cynthia. She's a super powerful epithet user who can create anything out of triangles, even entire dimensions. She often uses these to trap people inside and torture them, before spitting them back out. She ends up running a fowl with Veronica and Emrick, who each challenge her to a 1v1 for their own reasons. However it's not enough to defeat her overwhelming power, and Cynthia defeats the both of them with nothing but her rinky dink knife and her once per round one cost anytime. - Nagito Komaeda Nagito Komaeda ends up being summoned from a weapon in the match. He's an extremely powerful criminal whose luck is so strong he can morph and change reality with it. He quickly manipulates Guido Fop into performing a suicide move to ignite some special poison. This poison envelops the arena as a gas, with the potential to kill anyone that breathes it. The players manage to barely escape through the escape hatch Nagito used, and also conveniently "found". There, Dante and Meridian explain Nagito's existence as a massive criminal. - Final Fight Against Tyrone In Tyrone's third appearance on Episode 33, only the strongest players come to fight. This weirdly includes Weylan, who is a fucking child, and a really stupid one at that, but DBA power lists tend not to make sense in universe. They have a massive three phase boss fight that involves stolen HPC cards and a tricycle, and Tyrone nearly defeats the players with his Overclass setting the turns the players have to live to 3. However, they manage to win, barely. From there it's revealed that Nagito Komaeda manipulated Tyrone into using his outclass on his EGO, causing him to go crazy in the first place. Nagito manages to convince a Shadow Nagito that Googol spawned to join his side, so there were two of them now. No one was having this, so before the Nuclear Warhead the Nagitos luckily predicted would land could do so, the team made a massive multipart dual tech to send them to the Lockerverse to be defeated by Weylan Jr., and then collected by the Time Police that Cam called in. - Vanderbelt and Demon Sister Family Bonding Night - After Silica and Voia bond (somehow), Voia thinks that it would be a good idea for a nice family bonding experience between the two families. Silica, of course, is on board. Thus began the construction of the SHADOW PLAYROOM! A playroom that is, naturally, located within The Shadowrealm. Originally meant as a bonding experience, the families took it as a battle between the two (mostly due to Sylvia's miscommunication), though this was cleaned up during the first combat (in which Flora made a pizza hut and then set it on fire). The main events that happened were Cynthia beating up Voia cuz she just wanted to take a nap, the unlikely friendship between Angelica and Venus, and the grand tank Tri-Tech between Flora, Venus and Angelica. Zalgo Appears - Attack of the Stand Users - Dr. Marlow, Morpheus, and The Bedlams - Zalgo's Spreading Continues - Litch Almost Granting W a Body - THE RAT: Scourge of Cheese Land - The Oilingtons Appear - MatPat Returns for the Last Time - Players * x89rt - The original leader of DBA. He had to leave after episode 8 or so, and has been missing in action since. * Ballast - The owner of the discord and Roll20. He's basically the final authority on DBA matters and he knows it, yo. Me when I know it, yo. Reminder that G'nome memes are punishable by death. * Patronix/Austin - The owner of Fine Dining and the twitch channel that DBA is streamed to. He's a big monkey and puts way too much effort into the episodes he GMs. He's also done a significant amount of the art across DBA history. * Sylvia - The most prolific of the GMs, she's been either a player or GM of almost every single episode of DBA since its inception. Her characters tend to be the most well known since she has so few to pass around for all the shit she does. * zanzaKlaus - Resident elder god who also looks like human Shrek, he tends to make really cursed characters and has a habit of balancing things at a higher level than others. Another artist, but he mostly does just his own characters. * YumYumBits - Probably the biggest artist in DBA, he's drawn the most character icons overall. He's also shown to be a really good GM, doing some of DBA's highlight episodes. * lordofgeckos - The local Australian, Geckos tends to play a lot of lovable and fan favorite characters, and is all around a really chill dude. * Dream - Local screamlord, Dream doesn't play the most often but his characters always make a big impact, playing classics like Benny Brooks and Gizmo Garrison. He also delivers some of the best one liners. * DigletFeet - The dad of the players, Diglet plays many of DBA's most lovable wholesome characters. * Moomin - A man with disastrous concepts and chaotic gods rivaling even Zanza, Moomin is the type of character to kill off his character and then make the character again, but with a 2 on the end. He's also considered by some to be the funniest person, not saying much, but striking gold when he does. * Actually a Ghost - * Belmoley - * Kakapo - * Chris - * DarkStar - The other half of the Star and Sylvia power duo, Star has made some of the gayest characters and some of the most wholesome beans in DBA, as well as being the fastest artist DBA has to offer. * Elthanis - * Spencer - * Brice - * Eternal_Savvy - Nice. * Wizardy - * SuperDrops - * Mimi - AKA HuntersAnarchy and/or Trash. Also an artist monkey. * ClockworkGrunt - * SynchTune- * PocoWarrior - * Iris - The Gay Vampire * More that I'm forgetting Category:Campaigns